Amy Adams Set To Play Janis Joplin

I admit, I don’t know much about Janis Joplin other than that her voice sounded like a cat had recently clawed its way down the inside of her throat (and it sort of worked for her), but Amy Adams seems like a strange fit to play the iconic fem rocker. Yet Deadline insists Adams is set to play her in a film directed by City of God’s Fernando Meirelles.

Maybe the problem is really my recent impression of Adams who’s been sort of stereotyped recently as the overly sweet, almost too cute, all American girl. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but she’s a talented actress who definitely has a lot more to offer than perpetually playing a live-action Disney princess.

Yet it’s worth noting that Adams is already considerably older than Joplin was when she died. Janis was 27 she died of an overdose in 1970. Amy Adams is almost 36. By the time they start filming this project, she’ll be more than a decade older than Janis was when she died and it seems likely that during the course of the film she’ll be asked to play Janis at a much younger age than even that. Amy Adams is incredibly youthful and energetic, but is she really that youthful and energetic? Maybe it doesn't matter. When Janis died, thanks to drugs, she looked more like 47 than 27.

The movie doesn’t even have a studio yet so it could be years before this gets going, years in which the gap between Amy and Janis will only grow. The script has been through several drafts and it sounds like they’re still pretty early on in the development process. We’ll see where this goes and let you know.

UPDATE!Moviehole has additional details on Amy Adams' new Joplin project. They say this is the film Zooey Deschanel was originally supposed to star in and Adams is replacing her, possibly because the film's producers needed a bigger name to get funding. The movie is tentatively being titled Janis Joplin : Get it While You Can.